The present invention allows a user to obtain product information from a search engine and pay for found products with reward points from individual reward accounts or aggregated reward points or a combination of reward points and other consideration such as cash, coupons, and/or a credit card.
Due to the wide reaching presence of the Internet, consumers are able to conduct transactions with virtually any entity having a web server or other presence on the Internet. Consumers are thus faced with countless opportunities to (1) collect value (“reward components”) as a result of performing certain transactions or other Internet-based actions, and (2) redeem such collected value (“payment components”) in exchange for products and service offered by merchants on the Internet. As used herein, the term “product” refers to any tangible item (e.g. a DVD) or intangible item (e.g. a property right) as well as a service (e.g. landscaping services) that may be performed for the consumer. A merchant is anyone that supplies a product to a consumer or user.
Thus, due to the multitude of available opportunities to either obtain value or redeem value, there is a need to provide consumers with a means for finding desired opportunities and offers via the Internet. The prior art provides simple searching tools such as search engines provided by GOOGLE, MICORSOFT and YAHOO, but does not adequately address the current needs of consumers as described herein.
A reward component of a transaction may be defined as any value conveyed by a merchant or other entity to the consumer or user as an incentive for executing a transaction, performing an activity, etc. A typical example of a reward component is the awarding of reward points for making a purchase, such as when AMERICAN EXPRESS awards 500 Membership Rewards points for making a $500 purchase with an AMERICAN EXPRESS card, or when The GAP awards 50 GAP Reward Points for making a $50 purchase at a GAP store. Other reward components include rebates, discount coupons, or any cash equivalent tender). It is noted that a reward component may be an intangible perceived value in addition to real values listed above.
Likewise, a payment component is essentially a reward component that is being used as payment in whole or in part for a product from a merchant. Thus, a consumer uses a payment component to pay for a DVD that costs $20 when he redeems 2,000 reward points (each worth one cent in this example) with the merchant. Likewise, the consumer may redeem previously accrued rebates, coupons, etc.
Reward points (also referred to as frequent flyer miles) are used as an increasingly common form of both reward components and payment components in consumer as well as business transactions. That is, in order to attract and retain business customers, airlines, hotels, car rental companies, chain retailers, telecom providers, etc. have historically introduced frequent use programs that offer awards of reward points, frequent flyer miles or other such incentives schemes based on the distance traveled or use by that customer. Success has enabled airlines to modify the manner in which mileage was acquired to include travel related purchases by consumers. For example, the dollar-based cost of a hotel stay may be awarded as reward points or mileage to a client account. Within the past several years, credit card companies or other retailers and etailers have co-branded credit cards in the name of the airlines and the credit card company where each dollar spent using the card is recorded as a mile of travel or point in the award program or some monetary value assigned by the issuer. These cards may additionally award bonus miles in coordination with user purchases of preferred products or flights during preferred times.
With regard to FIG. 1, a model of the frequent flyer systems of the prior art is presented. Two different airlines servers are shown surrounded by their related marketing partners, the first grouping labeled Airline 1 100 and the second independently operated but functionally similar grouping labeled Airline 2 200. In order to lure more business travelers, the airlines 100, 200 have established marketing agreements with travel related companies to provide the business traveler with a more robust way to generate rewards in the form of frequent flyer miles. These marketing arrangements or associations have typically involved credit card companies, phone companies, hotel chains and car rental companies. Any purchases made through these “co-branded” partners were then awarded to the user periodically. Bonus miles or points may additionally be accumulated based on the user's actions in response to offers made by the airline or in coordination with the partner company. For example, phone companies offer bonus miles to users based on the user's agreement to change phone service. These points are obtained by the partner companies by purchasing them from the issuing entity for redistribution as an incentive to utilize their particular goods and/or services. FIG. 2 shows some sample co-branded cards that are representative of marketing agreements between TWA, Sprint, and Mastercard. In order to receive these benefits, the user must sign up with each of the partner companies separately and provide the frequent flyer account number that is to receive the credited miles. A user either making phone calls or purchases in accordance with the agreements made with each of these partners will first accumulate a value on the partner's system which in turn is periodically updated on the airline reward server to reflect the value earned during that period. FIG. 3 is representative of a typical user account that shows various earnings in the system transferred in from any of the co-branded partners. The records of the table in FIG. 3 identify the source of the rewards, the dates they were recorded and the number of miles associated with that transaction. The user can view the accumulated miles by accessing the airline reward server or by tracking the individual value reported to the user through the various bills the user receives from each of the co-branded partners.
The prior art does not provide for a consumer to utilize relatively small amounts of reward points in any manner. In addition, a consumer often can only redeem points in an airline-related manner (i.e. to obtain a free ticket or upgrade from coach to first class). This prior art does not recognize the need for a consumer to exchange reward points for non-travel related goods, and in particular renders relatively small numbers of points useless. For example, a consumer that does not travel often may have 500 points in United Airlines, 700 points in USAir, and 1000 points in TWA, each of which is relatively useless in the prior art.
What is desired, therefore, is a system where users may submit reward points or credits accumulated for other types of transactions for redemption or translation into a form readily acceptable by a participating merchant. A user should be able to pool or aggregate the various earned rewards that may exist in currently separate reward server systems where the resulting combined value may be used by a user of the system to acquire items of equivalent or relative value. A user who has earned frequent flyer miles or rewards from several points issuers that, individually, are insufficient to receive any direct value for their mileage may be able to pool the miles acquired from several different points issuers to transfer the awards accumulated to the trading system of this invention. The user may have the selected items delivered by performing a purchase request by various means such as a product search over the Internet, dialing a toll free number for placing an order, or any other means of placing an order that will accept payment from this system.
It is also desired to provide a product search engine integrated with or adjunct to the reward points aggregation aspect of this invention to enable a user to easily find a desired product with a search of a plurality of resources such as the Internet and then pay for a product found in the search with reward points from individual reward accounts as well as aggregated reward points from an exchange account.